RUTHFULLY YOURS

As the Framers knew, we are unlikely to outgrow human nature. So what happens when we decide we’ve outgrown a Constitution designed to protect us from human nature’s foibles? The question arises, yet again, thanks to Senator Bob Corker. The Tennessee Republican, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, is author — along with Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) — of a ballyhooed bipartisan bill that is being touted as the derailment of President Obama’s plan to trample congressional prerogatives en route to a calamitous “deal” that will facilitate jihadist Iran’s nuclear-weapons ambitions. (I use scare-quotes because the so-called deal is still a work in regress.) So guess who now supports this stalwart congressional resistance to our imperial president? Why none other than . . . yes . . . Barack Obama!

You think maybe, just maybe, the Corker bill isn’t quite what it’s cracked up to be?

You’d be right. When you read the legislation, it becomes apparent that Senator Corker is simply channeling his inner Mitch McConnell.

WHO TRUSTS Iran? Most Americans don’t. According to two new polls, a majority of the public strongly doubts that the ruling theocrats in Tehran can be counted on to keep their end of any nuclear deal negotiated in the US-led “P5+1” talks in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Asked in a Fox News poll how much of Iran’s claims on nuclear matters can be trusted, 55 percent of respondents replied that the United States “can’t trust anything” the regime says, while 28 percent were willing to trust only “a little.” Similarly, a survey by NBC News found that 68 percent of Americans consider Iran unlikely to abide by any nuclear agreement.

Nothing unusual there. Given Iran’s long history of deceit, it would be strange if Americans and their allies didn’t regard as worthless any nuclear promises the mullahs make.

Brussels, April 19 – Fresh on the heels of yet another brutal video clip featuring a mass-execution of “infidels” by Islamic State fighters, sixteen Foreign Ministers of the European Union decided to address the danger by voting to mark products produced in Israeli settlements.

IS militants in Libya conducted two mass executions this week, beheading one group of Ethiopians and Eritreans along the Mediterranean coast and shooting the other. Dozens of victims were killed in the two incidents, which were filmed and distributed to international media. In response, the EU ministers vowed to take measures to protect those threatened by IS barbarism, and determined that the best way to prevent recurrences of mass beheadings in Syria, Iraq, and Libya would be to apply a distinctive label to all products imported into EU nations from areas in the West Bank where Jews live.

Israel analysts shocked by Obama’s comments on sanctions, S-300 supply‘This is the new America. We had better get used to it,’ says TV commentator after president leaves door open to Iran’s sanctions demand, defends Putin’s missile sale

There was no immediate official Israeli response to the president’s comments, which were made after the start of Shabbat in Israel, when politicians generally do not work.

“Jaws dropped” around the studio, said the Channel 10 News diplomatic commentator Ben Caspit, as news broke of Obama’s declared empathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to supply Tehran with the S-300 missile defense system.

I had no idea this conference took place…please see who participated….. as well as Ralph “Nadir” (synonyms: lowest point, lowest level, all-time low, bottom, rock-bottom) of American Israel bashers….rsk
Following the heavy coverage of AIPAC’s (the virulently pro-Israeli government lobby) multi-day annual Washington convention in March, the mainstream media might have been interested for once in covering alternative viewpoints like those discussed at the April 10th conference “The Israel Lobby: Is it Good for the US? Is it Good for Israel?” (Israellobbyus.org). Fairness and balance in reporting should produce at least some coverage of such an event.

Organized by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, which was launched about thirty years ago by a British Army Officer who served in World War II and two retired U.S. Ambassadors to countries in the Middle East (wrmea.org), the day-long program at the prestigious National Press Club should have been intriguing to reporters. After all, are they not interested in important, taboo-challenging presentations on a critical dimension of U.S. foreign and military policy?

The presenters were much more newsworthy than most of the speakers at the AIPAC convention who redundantly restated the predictable AIPAC line. “The Israel Lobby: Is it Good for the US? Is it Good for Israel?” had presenters ranging from the courageous, principled columnist, Gideon Levy of Israel’s best and most serious newspaper, Haaretz; Princeton Professor emeritus of international law and the former UN Special Rapporteur for Palestinian territories, Richard Falk; former members of Congress, Paul Findley (R-IL) and Nick Rahall (D-WV); author and an Israeli general’s son, Miko Peled; Dr. Jack Shaheen, the award-winning author documenting stereotypes of Arabs and Arab-Americans in Hollywood and the U.S. media; and even a former AIPAC supporter M. J. Rosenberg (mjrosenberg.net) who witnessed the power of AIPAC money as both a congressional staffer and later an AIPAC senior staffer in the nineteen eighties.